Dear Apple, you suck....
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Before any of you criticize or go lounge on me, let me propose a question or challenge for you.... Umm, USA area code, it's relevant. Two months ago, I received a call from an individual who really wanted to purchase a car I need to sell (estate issue). Due to other reasons, the car has not been sold, it needs to go, and if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well. He calls me, he'd love the car, and for the life of me, God and Jesus and whoever you worship area codes in the us no longer mean anything. My DIL is from New Jersey and is now in Kansas. Why is this important? I have no way of searching my phone (an iPhone) to figure out what the elephanting #### the number is. It's useless.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
Area codes mean less and less all the time. Mainly due to mobile phones.
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Before any of you criticize or go lounge on me, let me propose a question or challenge for you.... Umm, USA area code, it's relevant. Two months ago, I received a call from an individual who really wanted to purchase a car I need to sell (estate issue). Due to other reasons, the car has not been sold, it needs to go, and if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well. He calls me, he'd love the car, and for the life of me, God and Jesus and whoever you worship area codes in the us no longer mean anything. My DIL is from New Jersey and is now in Kansas. Why is this important? I have no way of searching my phone (an iPhone) to figure out what the elephanting #### the number is. It's useless.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
We (Norway, that is) abandoned area codes 30 years ago, in 1993. Cellular phones were rapidly catching on, and almost by definition, area codes for mobile devices make little sense. Even for land lines, we could transfer a given subscriber number to any other national number (including a cellular number) a few years earlier. I used to prefer my landline phone to the cellular phone when at home, but when I went on vacation, I transferred the landline number to my cellular. The entire landline network was closed down a while ago. If you have a cabled phone today in Norway, it is an internet phone. Internet is not aware of the hierarchical structure of the POTS network. (It has its own hierarchies, but they are different!) So there is no technical justification at all for area codes today. Why would we want them? In the old days, car registration plates had an "area code" first letter. If you moved to another county, you would have to re-register your car in the other county. (Also, if you sold your car to your neighbor, he would have to get new, different registration plates for it.) Today we have plates with two first letters; they do indicate where the car was first registered, which may be in the town you bought the car, not the town where you live. If you move, or sell your car, it keeps its plates. The change to location-independent car plates came about in 1970. The only noticeable loss was for the kids in the back seat on summer car vacations, keeping a roll of how many cars from each county we could see on the road. That used to keep me and my sister entertained in my early childhood. (We also counted cars of different colors - that is still available to bored kids of today. Maybe the iPad is more attractive to them :-).)
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Before any of you criticize or go lounge on me, let me propose a question or challenge for you.... Umm, USA area code, it's relevant. Two months ago, I received a call from an individual who really wanted to purchase a car I need to sell (estate issue). Due to other reasons, the car has not been sold, it needs to go, and if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well. He calls me, he'd love the car, and for the life of me, God and Jesus and whoever you worship area codes in the us no longer mean anything. My DIL is from New Jersey and is now in Kansas. Why is this important? I have no way of searching my phone (an iPhone) to figure out what the elephanting #### the number is. It's useless.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
charlieg wrote:
I have no way of searching my phone (an iPhone) to figure out what the elephanting #### the number is.
Searching your phone for a number (that called you), or searching for a number using your phone (or any other computer-ish device)?
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Before any of you criticize or go lounge on me, let me propose a question or challenge for you.... Umm, USA area code, it's relevant. Two months ago, I received a call from an individual who really wanted to purchase a car I need to sell (estate issue). Due to other reasons, the car has not been sold, it needs to go, and if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well. He calls me, he'd love the car, and for the life of me, God and Jesus and whoever you worship area codes in the us no longer mean anything. My DIL is from New Jersey and is now in Kansas. Why is this important? I have no way of searching my phone (an iPhone) to figure out what the elephanting #### the number is. It's useless.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
And how is this Apple's fault?
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Before any of you criticize or go lounge on me, let me propose a question or challenge for you.... Umm, USA area code, it's relevant. Two months ago, I received a call from an individual who really wanted to purchase a car I need to sell (estate issue). Due to other reasons, the car has not been sold, it needs to go, and if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well. He calls me, he'd love the car, and for the life of me, God and Jesus and whoever you worship area codes in the us no longer mean anything. My DIL is from New Jersey and is now in Kansas. Why is this important? I have no way of searching my phone (an iPhone) to figure out what the elephanting #### the number is. It's useless.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
charlieg wrote:
if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well
I hear you Charlie. My Mom passed away in March and I'm executor of her estate. She had a will, my brother and I get along well, the lawyer who wrote the will is handling probate, and everything's cut and dry. It's still a PITA difficult to get through with countless details. I think I'm scheduled to grieve just in time for the holidays.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
We (Norway, that is) abandoned area codes 30 years ago, in 1993. Cellular phones were rapidly catching on, and almost by definition, area codes for mobile devices make little sense. Even for land lines, we could transfer a given subscriber number to any other national number (including a cellular number) a few years earlier. I used to prefer my landline phone to the cellular phone when at home, but when I went on vacation, I transferred the landline number to my cellular. The entire landline network was closed down a while ago. If you have a cabled phone today in Norway, it is an internet phone. Internet is not aware of the hierarchical structure of the POTS network. (It has its own hierarchies, but they are different!) So there is no technical justification at all for area codes today. Why would we want them? In the old days, car registration plates had an "area code" first letter. If you moved to another county, you would have to re-register your car in the other county. (Also, if you sold your car to your neighbor, he would have to get new, different registration plates for it.) Today we have plates with two first letters; they do indicate where the car was first registered, which may be in the town you bought the car, not the town where you live. If you move, or sell your car, it keeps its plates. The change to location-independent car plates came about in 1970. The only noticeable loss was for the kids in the back seat on summer car vacations, keeping a roll of how many cars from each county we could see on the road. That used to keep me and my sister entertained in my early childhood. (We also counted cars of different colors - that is still available to bored kids of today. Maybe the iPad is more attractive to them :-).)
trønderen wrote:
We (Norway, that is) abandoned area codes 30 years ago, in 1993.
The US finalized conversion in the same way in 2004. However many people still refer to the numbers after the country code (if they are even aware of the country code) as the area code. Depending on how long one has had a number and if one has not moved then the area code might reflect that. And at least in some circumstances new phone numbers allocated by certain providers will still have an area code that reflects where it was allocated. There are telephony management (not hardware) reasons for that as the providers request blocks rather than individual numbers for allocation. Additionally there are marketing reasons since a brick and mortar business might prefer a number that reflects the physical location.
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Before any of you criticize or go lounge on me, let me propose a question or challenge for you.... Umm, USA area code, it's relevant. Two months ago, I received a call from an individual who really wanted to purchase a car I need to sell (estate issue). Due to other reasons, the car has not been sold, it needs to go, and if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well. He calls me, he'd love the car, and for the life of me, God and Jesus and whoever you worship area codes in the us no longer mean anything. My DIL is from New Jersey and is now in Kansas. Why is this important? I have no way of searching my phone (an iPhone) to figure out what the elephanting #### the number is. It's useless.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
Myself I have zero phone calls saved in my phone. I almost always delete them as soon as they arrive. I don't keep old contacts either. I have a couple of old business ones saved but even if I want to call them I am going to look up the number first anyways. That is even more problematic these days as employees of businesses will use their personal phones to call with updates to service (etc.) I certainly don't want to save those. I keep some message threads mostly because it saves me from starting a new thread with someone that I message all the time. So searching for anything is very easy.
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trønderen wrote:
We (Norway, that is) abandoned area codes 30 years ago, in 1993.
The US finalized conversion in the same way in 2004. However many people still refer to the numbers after the country code (if they are even aware of the country code) as the area code. Depending on how long one has had a number and if one has not moved then the area code might reflect that. And at least in some circumstances new phone numbers allocated by certain providers will still have an area code that reflects where it was allocated. There are telephony management (not hardware) reasons for that as the providers request blocks rather than individual numbers for allocation. Additionally there are marketing reasons since a brick and mortar business might prefer a number that reflects the physical location.
That makes me curious: Have you had any analog telephone switches after 2004? In Norway, abandoning area codes came as a side effect of the complete digitalization, completed in 1990. (We were not the first country in the world with an all-digital phone network; some developing countries never had any analog network, so their first network in the late 1980s were all digital. But we were the first to completely throw out old analog technology and replace it with digital!) I just can't see now you could possibly realize full number portability across the nation if there were still analog, electromechanical 500-switch (or similar) based systems still in operation. (Side remark: When I see those mechanical 500-switches in the museum, I am much more impressed than I am by the modern digital switches!)
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And how is this Apple's fault?
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
because I want to complain? :) Apple is allegedly all about usability - read on. If apple and my phone can convert voice to text, why can't I search for something? I really don't use my phone that much, but I think I could do a search through my texts and converted messages. Hmm... I need to write an app and get rich....
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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because I want to complain? :) Apple is allegedly all about usability - read on. If apple and my phone can convert voice to text, why can't I search for something? I really don't use my phone that much, but I think I could do a search through my texts and converted messages. Hmm... I need to write an app and get rich....
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
Assuming you've looked in your recent calls log (where you see the last 100 calls) what criteria would you use? If your problem is that the call log only goes back 100 calls and this call was further back than that you might be in luck. The iPhone actually stores the last 1000 calls. You can delete calls from the first 100 and old ones will "bubble up".
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because I want to complain? :) Apple is allegedly all about usability - read on. If apple and my phone can convert voice to text, why can't I search for something? I really don't use my phone that much, but I think I could do a search through my texts and converted messages. Hmm... I need to write an app and get rich....
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
You mean you would want Apple to index the content of your phone calls? The voice content of your phone calls? Are you serious? :omg:
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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charlieg wrote:
if ANYONE wants you to be an executor of an estate... well
I hear you Charlie. My Mom passed away in March and I'm executor of her estate. She had a will, my brother and I get along well, the lawyer who wrote the will is handling probate, and everything's cut and dry. It's still a PITA difficult to get through with countless details. I think I'm scheduled to grieve just in time for the holidays.
Software Zen:
delete this;my mom was a feisty old new Englander bitch... and I say that with all love and respect. Handling a simple estate is stupid ridiculous .
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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Myself I have zero phone calls saved in my phone. I almost always delete them as soon as they arrive. I don't keep old contacts either. I have a couple of old business ones saved but even if I want to call them I am going to look up the number first anyways. That is even more problematic these days as employees of businesses will use their personal phones to call with updates to service (etc.) I certainly don't want to save those. I keep some message threads mostly because it saves me from starting a new thread with someone that I message all the time. So searching for anything is very easy.
Mine just accumulate. Think your mail inbox. With my email, I have a keyboard and mouse. The phone? Just thumbs and that sucks. Seriously, I need to write an app.. nah, autumn is almost here. I'm going orienteering, burning stuff in my back yard and otherwise not giving a elephant.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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That makes me curious: Have you had any analog telephone switches after 2004? In Norway, abandoning area codes came as a side effect of the complete digitalization, completed in 1990. (We were not the first country in the world with an all-digital phone network; some developing countries never had any analog network, so their first network in the late 1980s were all digital. But we were the first to completely throw out old analog technology and replace it with digital!) I just can't see now you could possibly realize full number portability across the nation if there were still analog, electromechanical 500-switch (or similar) based systems still in operation. (Side remark: When I see those mechanical 500-switches in the museum, I am much more impressed than I am by the modern digital switches!)
trønderen wrote:
Have you had any analog telephone switches after 2004?...if there were still analog, electromechanical 500-switch
The US - definitely. The initial deployment required a database dip to retrieve the actual called number. That of course existed to support the older telco hardware. Especially with small rural installs. I can't say how it works now.
